Candy Gunther Brown (Indiana University) delivered the 2024–25 Cushwa Center Lecture, “Francis S. MacNutt and the Globalization of Charismatic Christianity,” at the University of Notre Dame on Friday, October 4, 2024.
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Fifty years ago, on June 14, 1974, tens of thousands gathered in Notre Dame Stadium for a healing service at the eighth annual International Conference on Charismatic Renewal in the Catholic Church. Francis MacNutt, then a Dominican priest, preached at the event, described at the time as the largest public healing service to date for the rapidly growing Catholic charismatic movement. The occasion solidified MacNutt’s reputation as the foremost healing minister among Catholic charismatics. Subsequent years would see MacNutt traveling across the globe and training many other ministers; married and excommunicated; and eventually reconciled with the Catholic Church and carrying out decades of continued, ecumenical ministry.
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Brown received a Research Travel Grant from the Cushwa Center in 2023 for a biography of Francis MacNutt, to be published in the Eerdmans Library of Religious Biography series. More recently, she secured a Louisville Institute Sabbatical Grant for Researchers in support of the book.
A historian and ethnographer of religion and culture, Brown’s research and writing have dealt with evangelical print culture and U.S. evangelicalism; global Pentecostal and Charismatic Christianity, science, medicine, and religion; and religious practices related to alternative healing, including yoga and mindfulness. Past projects have received support from, among other sources, the John Templeton Foundation and the Mellon Foundation.
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Read more about Brown’s research: cushwa.nd.edu/news/a-conversation-with-candy-gunther-brown
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- Candy Gunther Brown: “Francis S. MacNutt and the Globalization of Charismatic Christianity” ( Download)
